An Angel at My Table – Criterion Collection (DVD)

This sprawling, detailed film by Jane Campion (THE PIANO) tells the true story of Janet Frame, a painfully sensitive girl who managed to escape a dreary rural upbringing and eight years in a mental hospital to become New Zealand`s premier poet. The film unfolds as a trilogy, with each section based on a different Frame autobiography.

To the Is-Land

chronicles her childhood and awkward teenage years.

An Angel at My Table

focuses on her time as a teacher and her horrifying mental institution experience.

The Envoy from Mirror City

finds Frame an emerging, critically lauded writer traveling on a grant in Europe and finding love for the first time. Kerry Fox, as the adult Frame, is astonishing. She transmits painfully self-aware shyness until it rubs off on the viewer. Campion expertly captures the details of Frame`s time and place, creating a brutal, impersonal world by turns unremittingly dreary and starkly beautiful. Stunning, exhausting, brilliant, this acclaimed film debuted on New Zealand TV as a miniseries and was later edited for feature-length release internationally.